Hand-held electronic devices have often been made from two separately formed halves of a housing, a front half and a back half, which are coupled together with one or more fasteners, within which the electrical and mechanical components forming the device are placed. Often times, each of the front half and the back half are formed from plastic or other material using an injection molding process, which enables considerable freedom in incorporating diverse sizes and shapes, and which can be used to produce various functional and/or aesthetic effects. Generally, the desired sizes and shapes, and their corresponding arrangement are incorporated into the shape of a mold. The mold is then used to produce the parts.
More recently an increasing amount of housings are being seen, which are being made from materials other than plastics, such as various metals and metal alloys, where the use of metal materials have often been accompanied by still further manufacturing techniques for similarly producing separately formed halves, which are then coupled together. In the case of metals and metal alloys, various techniques including forging, and/or stamping and forming have often been used to produce components used in forming the housings.
The movement toward an increasing amounts of metal in the housings has been precipitated in part due to the decrease in the overall size of devices, while the size of displays, keypads, and other components have alternatively increased in size. This has resulted in less material (i.e. reduced device volume) being used in the formation of the housing, as well as the support structures within and/or forming part of the housing. Correspondingly, the material used to form the housing and/or the corresponding support structures have had to be formed from stronger materials able to withstand an ever increasing load per unit measure. This in turn has facilitated the increasing use of manufacturing processes, which are consistent with the more recently predominant materials being used.
With molded, forged and stamped parts, tooling used in economically producing large volumes of the parts tends to be very specific to a particular design, such that if changes need to be made to the design, often times corresponding changes need to made to the associated tooling. For example, if the parts which are being molded need to be changed, the mold from which the parts are produced would often similarly need to be changed. In some instances, an existing mold might be able to be modified to accommodate a particular change. In other instances, new molds might need to be produced.
Some manufacturing processes for housings for use in hand-held electronic devices have more recently involved the use of extruded materials. Extruded materials typically involve a manufacturing method where an amount of material is pushed or drawn through a die, thereby producing a formed element, which has a generally uniform profile at varying points along the length of the extruded element in the direction of extrusion. More specifically, the formed element generally has a uniform cross sectional shape which is defined by the size and the shape of the openings in the die through which material is pushed or drawn. In addition to using the die to define the outer cross sectional shape, hollow sections within the shape can similarly be formed, for example, by placing a pin or piercing mandrel inside the die. Traditionally, extrusions have been used in applications where an element having long, straight and generally uniform shapes are desired. For elements having significant variations along the length of the element, extrusions have typically been avoided.
Recent extruded elements used in the formation of a housing have included an extrusion having one piece continuous outer profile, which is used to form both the front, back and sides of the device. Such a construction can result in enhanced structural strength, in so far as the front, back and sides are formed as part of a one piece construction. A hollow section is formed in the extruded element having an opening at the beginning and end of the extrusion, often corresponding to a top and bottom, within which mechanical and electronic components can be placed. In some instances openings will be cut into the sidewall of the extruded element along the length of the same to provide more direct access to some of the internally placed and appropriately aligned mechanical and electronic components. After the components have been placed within the housing, the openings at the ends of the extrusion are generally capped.
In such an instance, the appearance of the housing is generally very uniform (i.e. generally does not vary) along the length of the extrusion. To date, such a construction has resulted in housings which have very limited amounts of variability along the length of the extrusion. While such a style can be very clean and uniform, sometimes such a style can be very plain. In some instances, it can be very difficult to deviate from such a style even when function and/or aesthetics would prefer such a deviation, which limits the type of housings that have historically been produced through such a manufacturing process.
The present inventors have recognized that it would be beneficial if further shaping of the extruded element could be implemented to enable more variability in the appearance of the housing, which incorporates an extruded element. While traditionally caps have been used to primarily provide a cover for the openings at the ends of the extruded element, the present inventors have recognized that it would be further beneficial if caps or extrusion covers could be used to help shape the overall device. Furthermore, the cap could extend to cover substantial portions of two or more adjacent sides, which would provide for more comprehensive shaping including shaping which extends to include one or more of the corners of the device. Still further, the cap could incorporate a mechanism that enables selective access to the interior of the device, as well as help to accommodate an extruded element which has a front surface and a back surface that are non-symmetrical.